“Shit,” she heard him murmur.
“Why did you say shit? You have no idea what I’m about to tell you.”
“Sorry, go ahead.”
Alegria didn’t have much of a French accent after all the years she’d been living in the States, but it came out when she was angry. If things escalated, she reverted to speaking the language.
“Je rentre chez moi.”
“To France?”
“Non! New York.”
“I didn’t realize you considered New York home.”
“I have nowhere else to go.”
She heard Dutch take a deep breath. “Where are you now?”
“Where you left me.”
“In Annapolis?”
She nodded.
“Alegria, are you still there?”
“Sorry. Yes. I’m still at the Godets’.” As nice as Gunner’s mother was, it wasn’t just that she was still staying in their guest house; it was more that when the time came for her to leave, she didn’t know where she’d go, and that left her feeling unsettled.
“There are other options.”
“What? To live with you?”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?”
She stood and paced the room, cursing herself when she realized she was biting her nails.
“Can’t this wait until I get back? We’re flying into Reagan International. I’ll be to you an hour after we land.”
“We?”
“Mantis is flying from Reagan to Westchester.”
“He’s going to see his parents?”
“Manon?”
He so rarely called her by her given name, she didn’t know what to think. “Yes?”
“Do you want to see him?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
“Come to the airport. See him before he goes to Darien.”
“Why?”
“Because I know you want to. Because you’ll feel better after you’ve seen him, and he will too.”